The Bestseller Job

  Don’t think about that now, he thought. Let her have this moment.

  “It was our pleasure,” Nate insisted. He waited for Denise and Eliot to disengage before presenting her with a manila envelope. “Enclosed is a faxed release from Brad, granting you all rights with regard to Gavin’s estate.” A former insurance investigator who knew the ins and outs of fine print, Nate had personally drawn up the paperwork. “Just show that to your lawyer tomorrow morning, and I’m sure he’ll be able to straighten everything out.”

  Denise clutched the envelope to her chest. “I don’t believe it. It doesn’t seem real.”

  “Believe it,” Sophie told her. “Gavin’s work—everything you accomplished together—is all yours. Just as he would have wanted.”

  “Too bad the sequel’s not as good as the original,” Parker said. She was perched at the bar, poring over the patchwork manuscript they had brought back with them. She frowned at the pages. “Seriously, this book doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  Denise looked understandably baffled. “But—”

  “Just go with it,” Eliot advised her. “It’s easier that way.”

  Denise took his word for it. Getting back to the matter at hand, she opened the envelope and skimmed the enclosed document. A flicker of worry furrowed her brow.

  “What if Brad changes his mind?” she asked. “Is there any chance he could fight this?”

  “It’s always possible,” Nate conceded, “but between the ‘will’ and this signed release, he would be on extremely shaky ground, unless he wants to admit hiring Hardison to fake Brad’s will in the first place.”

  “You mean, hiring ‘Cyrano Jones,’” Hardison corrected Nate. “Respect the alias, man.”

  “Sure,” Nate said. “No tribble.”

  Hardison eyed Nate with new respect. Eliot resisted a temptation to punch them both.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he told Denise. “Brad raises a fuss, Officer Kolchak will pay him another call.”

  And that’s if he’s lucky, Eliot thought.

  His fists clenched at his sides.

  Their words seemed to reassure Denise. A grateful smile replaced her look of anxiety.

  “Thank you,” she said again. “I’ll talk to my lawyer in the morning, have him get in touch with the various publishers and studios.” Her eyes brimmed over. “This is like a dream come true, or, on second thought, more like waking up from a nightmare. I promise to make sure the profits go to support human rights, just like Gavin and I always intended.”

  “I’m glad we could remedy this situation for you,” Nate said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  Knowing Nate, Eliot suspected that their leader was already thinking ahead to their next play. More than any of them, probably, Nate was driven to fight back against a system that often screwed over people who deserved better. Sophie did her best to keep him balanced, and to get him to stop and smell the flowers now and then, but Nate was a man with a mission, and he wasn’t one to sit on his laurels for too long.

  Eliot knew the feeling. He had unfinished business, too.

  “Well, I won’t keep you any longer,” Denise said. “I’m sure there are plenty of other people who need your help.” Eliot walked her to the door, where she lingered on the threshold. She questioned him with her eyes, uncertain if he would be accompanying her back to her apartment. “Should I wait for you?” she asked softly. “Are you going my way?”

  He had been sticking close to her, in more ways than one, since the attack outside her apartment. Truth to tell, he had been spending every night at her place, and not just playing bodyguard. It still felt awkward, especially when he thought of Gavin, but it felt right, too. Life was short and it wasn’t just about Gavin anymore. It was about Denise and what she needed and wanted now. And, yeah, it was about his feelings for her, too. Denise was a beautiful, vital woman with whom he’d forged a real connection. It wasn’t fair to deny that out of respect for a ghost—or so he kept telling himself.

  Too bad he couldn’t tell her everything.

  “Maybe later,” he told her. “I’ve still got some stuff to take care of here.”

  That flicker of anxiety returned, almost as though she knew he wasn’t being entirely honest with her. “Anything serious?”

  “Nope,” he lied. “Just some shoptalk—about another job.”

  She eyed him carefully, not entirely convinced he was on the level. “Okay, I’ll leave you to it.” She moved in closer and lowered her voice. “Don’t be long, okay? I feel like celebrating.”

  “Count on it,” he said.

  That was all she needed to hear, apparently. Despite the audience elsewhere in the room, she pulled him in and planted a passionate kiss on his lips. For a second, he forgot all about any other pressing matters as he held her and kissed her back. Intoxicating moments passed before they finally broke apart.

  “I’ll be waiting,” she promised.

  She closed the door behind her as she left. Eliot turned to face his friends, who regarded him with varying degrees of amusement and/or embarrassment. Sophie looked pleased as punch, Hardison snickered and gave him a thumbs-up, Nate sighed and looked at the ceiling. Parker was oblivious.

  “What?” he challenged them. He swept his gaze over the others, daring them to say anything.

  “None of my business,” Nate said, shrugging. He nursed his afternoon scotch. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Me, too, Eliot thought.

  Sophie smirked, enjoying the situation a little too much. Her eyes twinkled. “I’m not saying anything.”

  “About what?” Parker asked. She looked up from the manuscript.

  “Eliot and Denise,” Hardison explained. He winked at her conspiratorially. “They’re sharing… pretzels.”

  It was something of a private joke between them.

  “Oh, that.” Parker shrugged. “I thought we already knew that.”

  “We did,” Nate said. “So let’s move on.” He put down his drink and got serious. “So, I take it we’re not telling Denise the rest of the story? What Hardison just turned up regarding Gavin’s accident?”

  “Not yet,” Eliot said. Nate had privately alerted him earlier, when Eliot was with Denise, that Hardison had tracked down some disturbing new evidence about the night Gavin died. Eliot had chosen to keep Denise in the dark until he found out more. “She’s happy now. Why spoil it?”

  “All right,” Nate agreed. “That’s your call—for now.”

  The celebratory mood evaporated as Eliot sat down on the couch in front of the blank, transparent screens. The rest of the team settled in for the briefing as well. Eliot assumed that the others had heard some of this before, but he wanted to get the full story from the beginning.

  “Show me,” he said.

  Hardison claimed his remote and fired up the screens. He drew the drapes to cut down on the glare. Looking directly at Eliot, he launched into the briefing:

  “As you know, Nate asked me to look into that supposed hit-and-run ‘accident,’ which turned out to be easier said than done. Despite my best efforts, which y’all know are nothing to sneeze at, I couldn’t find any video coverage of the actual collision. No CCTV footage, no amateur YouTube videos, no ATM security cameras… nada. Which, honestly, raised some red flags right there. It was like the hit-and-runner deliberately chose an intersection that was conveniently out of view of any inconvenient cameras. All I could find was this.”

  A crime photo of the intersection appeared on the central screen. A portion of an ambulance intruded in the lower right corner. Hardison had mercifully cropped the image to avoid any shots of Gavin’s lifeless body.

  Eliot appreciated the effort.

  “Check out those heavy black skid marks just in front of the crosswalk,” Hardison said. “Looks to me like somebody peeled out in a hurry, going from zero to sixty just as Gavin was crossing the street in front of them.”

  The skid marks looked fresh as hell. “That was no ac
cident,” Eliot realized. “Gavin was murdered.”

  “So it appears,” Nate agreed.

  “And in cold blood,” Sophie added, appalled. Although a career criminal, she disapproved of violence… and homicide, in particular. She had once told Nate that she could never be involved with a killer. “How despicable.”

  That was putting it lightly. Eliot seethed with tightly controlled fury. For a second, he was back in a humid Sumatran rain forest:

  “Eliot! Behind you!”

  A flashbulb went off in the jungle, distracting the sentry. Startled, he swung his gun toward the flash, away from Eliot.

  “You’re welcome,” Gavin said.

  “Tell me you know who did this,” Eliot said darkly.

  “To be honest with you, man, I wasn’t getting anywhere until those guys in the limo tried to grab Denise. Then I started looking for a suspicious black limousine matching your description.”

  “A 2010 six-passenger, black Lincoln Town Car,” Eliot spit out. His jaw clenched as he remembered how close the limo had come to carrying off Denise. If he had been a few minutes slower, or if she had put up less of a fight…

  “Right,” Hardison said. “Which matches the tread marks at the crosswalk, by the way.” He had clearly done his homework. “Now take a look at this.”

  He clicked his remote and a familiar black limousine appeared on the screen. The limo was parked at a curb somewhere in Manhattan, on what looked like a commercial side street well after sundown. A time stamp in the corner caught Eliot’s attention. He recognized the date and time.

  “That’s traffic-cam footage taken the night Gavin died, around the time his book signing was breaking up,” Hardison confirmed. “That limo is parked just up the road from the bookstore.”

  “Like they were waiting for him,” Eliot realized.

  “Is it the same limo?” Sophie asked. “The one you saw outside Denise’s apartment?”

  “Maybe.” Eliot stared at the footage, searching his memory. He had been too busy dealing with Denise and those thugs to take a really good look at the vehicle, but, yeah, that might be it. He looked at Hardison. “What else you got?”

  “More,” the hacker said. “A lot more.”

  Manipulating the remote like a virtuoso, he called up a quick shot of the same limo cruising down a nocturnal city street. Eliot thought he recognized the neighborhood. It wasn’t far from Denise’s place.

  “That’s about five minutes before the ‘accident,’” Hardison explained. “Running parallel to Brad’s own route home.”

  Sophie shook her head in dismay. “It’s like it’s stalking him.”

  “Probably had a spotter keeping an eye on him,” Nate speculated. “Keeping the limo informed of his movements.”

  “Yeah,” Eliot said. “That’s what I’d do.”

  In fact, he had taken part in similar setups, back in the bad, old days. That didn’t make him feel any better about what was about to happen to Gavin. The net had been tightening around his friend and he probably hadn’t even known it.

  Or had he suspected, in his final moments, that he was in danger?

  Assassins Never Forget…

  “It was a perfect opportunity,” Nate observed. “They knew when and where Gavin would be heading home that evening. Wouldn’t be too hard to figure out the most likely routes—and plan accordingly.”

  “This is why I never use the same route twice,” Parker said. “Ever.”

  Eliot believed it. For years, she had maintained at least six fake addresses in Boston while actually calling an empty storage unit home. Even after she joined Nate’s crew, it had been months before any of them actually found out where she lived. He still remembered the first time he laid eyes on her place, which had been more sparsely furnished than the average bomb shelter.

  “Skipping ahead,” Hardison continued. “Here we are three minutes after the collision, two blocks further west.”

  On the screens, the black limo was speeding away from the scene of the crime. Nate leaned forward, squinting at the display. He put on his reading glasses.

  “Can you give us a better look?” he asked.

  “Way ahead of you.” Hardison froze an image of the limo heading toward the camera. A blurry smudge could now be seen at the front of the vehicle. “Let me enhance that for y’all.”

  The blur resolved itself into a close-up of the limo’s damaged front end. A substantial dent, that Eliot was pretty sure hadn’t been there before, marred the limo’s elegant lines. The crumpled metal gleamed wetly.

  “Is that blood?” Sophie asked, making a face.

  “Looks like it,” Eliot said. Freshly spilled blood had a distinctive sheen to it, even on a crappy video feed. He glared furiously at the limo on the screen. He knew whose blood he was seeing.

  Gavin’s blood.

  Nate stayed on point. “What about the driver?”

  “On it.”

  Shifting the image away from the dented hood, Hardison zoomed in on a glimpse of the windshield. Magic pixels brought a pair of faces into resolution. Eliot spotted no trace of remorse on either man’s face.

  “Eliot?” Nate asked.

  “I don’t recognize the driver,” Eliot said, “but I know the guy in the passenger seat.” It was Broken Nose, back when his proboscis was still intact. He recognized the gorilla’s homely mug. “He’s one of the guys who jumped Denise.”

  Silence fell over the suite as the obvious implication sank in.

  “Okay,” Nate said finally. “No way is that a coincidence. We’re talking conspiracy here.”

  “But who is behind it?” Sophie asked. “Brad?”

  “That’s who my money’s on,” Hardison said. “He’s the one who made a killing, no pun intended, off Gavin’s death. And who needed to get the sequel from Denise. I’m guessing he planned to hold her hostage until her agent”—he looked pointedly at Sophie—“came through with the goods.”

  “Shouldn’t have bothered,” Parker said, disdainfully flipping another page. “This book sucks.”

  “Hey,” Hardison said indignantly. “You see what you can come up with on short notice? I did the best I damn could.”

  Parker cocked her head. “What’s this got to do with you?”

  “I like Brad for this,” Eliot said. “Who else could it be?”

  “What about Gavin’s anonymous whistle-blower?” Sophie asked. “Tarantula?”

  “Tarantula is just a shadow at this point,” Nate said. “No name, no motive, and no obvious reason to go after Denise.” He put aside that red herring. “Brad is still our prime suspect. When in doubt, look for who benefits.”

  “So?” Parker asked. “We already beat Brad, right?”

  “We got the book back, that’s all.” Eliot stood up and paced restlessly, too angry to sit still. “It’s not enough, not if he actually had Gavin killed.”

  This was why he couldn’t fully enjoy their victory earlier. Just stealing back the book would have been fine if this had only been about Brad screwing Denise out of Gavin’s legacy, but the stakes had just been raised, big-time. Somebody needed to pay for Gavin’s murder—and tricking Brad out of some book royalties was not nearly punishment enough.

  He knew Denise would feel the same way, but would he be doing her a favor by telling her the truth at this point? He hated the idea of lying to her, especially now that they had gotten so close, and yet…

  This was her life, her story. In more ways than one.

  “So what’s the verdict, Nate?” Sophie asked. “Are we still on this job? Maybe looking at a longer game?”

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. He looked expectantly at Hardison. “Is there anything we can use to pin Gavin’s death on Brad?”

  “I can keep looking,” the hacker said glumly. “But don’t get your hopes up. Brad has an airtight alibi for the night Gavin died, and he was home sleeping when those goons went after Denise. And there’s been no sign of a certain black limo at his mansion, at least not since we
started keeping tabs on him.”

  “What about the limo?” Eliot asked. “Where did it go after hitting Gavin?”

  Just give me an address, he thought vengefully. And aim me like a weapon.

  “I followed it as far as the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel,” Hardison said, “but the coverage got spotty after that. Too many residential neighborhoods and side roads in Brooklyn, you know; it’s not like Big Brother is watching every block in Flatbush and Crown Heights. I’m guessing they stayed away from the main drags to avoid… well, people like me.”

  Parker looked for the bright side. “But we know they’re in Brooklyn?”

  “Not necessarily,” Eliot said. “There are plenty of ways out of the borough. They could have just been taking a roundabout route to the Bronx, New Jersey, or God knows where.”

  “What if we search his financials?” Sophie suggested. “Look for evidence of any payoffs around the time Gavin died, or limousine rentals, or body-shop repairs, or something? Where there’s significant money involved, there’s usually a paper trail.”

  “Not this time,” Hardison said. “I already tried all that, with the help of several bottles of orange soda and a heaping helping of gummy frogs. Brad’s spent a lot of money on a lot of dubious stuff—we’re talking escorts, gambling, and some gamy Ukrainian Web sites that made me want to give my poor hard drive a Silkwood shower—but there’s no smoking gun linking him to Gavin’s death… or the attack on Denise. Sorry.”

  “That’s a problem,” Nate said. “We need a way in here.”

  “I can go through it all again,” Hardison said, sighing wearily. He worked the remote, replacing the traffic-cam footage with a blizzard of credit-card bills, canceled checks, bank statements, credit reports, deeds, titles, and other financial records, including a handwritten IOU scribbled on a cocktail napkin. “Maybe I missed a hidden account, but frankly, Brad didn’t seem all that sneaky. For all we know, he met those guys at a bar or strip club and just paid them cash under the table.” He huffed indignantly. “Did I ever mention how much I hate low-tech lowlifes? Backward cavemen don’t give me anything to work with.”